Like what Jeremy Hunt has just done to let him shut down hospitals when he feels like it...

I might be wrong but my point comes not from a place of legal knowledge, but from one of knowing that, y'know, if both the royal family AND the government don't want something in the public domain then... the likelihood is it won't end up there.

Happy to be proved wrong but I'd bet on these letters not being publically released for 50+ years or something. File under 'the order of things' I guess.

Charles firing off letters left right and centre to anyone who will listen. It's a bit tragic really.

The monarchy has no role to play in real life, no matter how desperately it tries to find one. Charity is the biggest smokescreen. Tourism is another complete lie.

Urgh. This bunch of parasites. Anyone who wants to talk about the Crown Estate brining in million for us is a fucking idiot. The crown estate isn't owned by the Royals. It's owned and funded and maintained by the tax payer and WE give the royals a slice of those profits.

It is consitutionally extremely hamfisted for the monarchy to try to play an active role in policy forming or law making. the queen grants assent to the law, nothing more. You need to keep a clear demarcation between parliament, government/ judiciary/ crown or else the earth will spin off its axis and consitutional lawyers (they always tend to be called Duncan or Simon in my experience) will sob.

My colleague Jessica Elgot has spoken to a graphologist to see what can be gauged from the spidery notations in Charles’s letters. She writes:

What can we tell about Charles’ personality from the small amount of handwritten annotations in the black spider memos?

Actually, quite a lot, according to the chairman of the British Institute of Graphologists. Charles’ fluid strokes, joined-up words and slight slant to the left reveal interesting things about his personality and how he will approach his kingship.

Adam Brand told the Guardian that the pressure on the up-and-down strokes is even, meaning Charles has a creative side and a “love of colour”.

In the introductions to the letters, Charles joins up all the words in his sentences. “He’s very connected, it’s quite unusual to see, it shows he’s a very logical thinker with an excellent brain,” Brand said. The handwriting is “middle zone dominant” which means Charles is “sociable, adaptable and a shrewd operator”.

Brand points to the slash which makes the dot for one of the “i”s, he said that could be a sign of impatience. “We can see the slight slant to the left means he is driven, he is business like. But the flourish on the “P” of prime minister, what is called ‘gala writing’, has a pool in the middle, he is open minded and empathetic.”

Perhaps most tellingly however, is the ‘M’ in “minister”. “The first part of the ‘m’ is larger, that means ‘what I want is very important’,” Brand said. “If it was the other way around, it would indicate that he was trying to impress the person you are writing to.”

- housing "ghettoes" in Northern Ireland (mental image of him writing this whilst sat in his study wearing a pair of Zoo York trackies hanging halfway down his arse like he's ODB)
- Jokes about his own mortality!!! Gee-ZAH
- Apologises for pestering him, yeah right you meddling fucker, piss of back to Poundbury